President Donald Trump took to Twitter on Sunday to let American citizens know that Democrats are using the Chinese coronavirus as an excuse to push their vote-by-mail scheme.
Trump warned that the expansion of mail-in voting could lead to the “greatest Rigged Election in history.”
The United States cannot have all Mail In Ballots. It will be the greatest Rigged Election in history. People grab them from mailboxes, print thousands of forgeries and “force” people to sign. Also, forge names. Some absentee OK, when necessary. Trying to use Covid for this Scam!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 24, 2020
The president’s warning comes as several states are looking to expand their vote-by-mail systems amid ongoing fear associated with the COVID-19 virus. In particular, Trump criticized Nevada’s plan to send absentee ballots to all registered voters in advance of their June 9 primary, calling it a “great voter fraud scenario.” The president also threatened the state’s federal funding.
“State of Nevada ‘thinks’ that they can send out illegal vote by mail ballots, creating a great Voter Fraud scenario for the State and the U.S. They can’t! If they do, ‘I think’ I can hold up funds to the State. Sorry, but you must not cheat in elections,” the president tweeted.
Trump also blasted Michigan’s plan to send absentee ballots to all voters, calling it “illegal” and also threatened to withhold federal funding from the state, should it follow through. “Michigan sends absentee ballots to 7.7 million ahead of Primaries and the General Election. This was done illegally and without authorization by a rogue Secretary of State. I will ask to hold up funding to Michigan if they want to go down this voter fraud plan,” Trump wrote.
No state is worse in pushing vote-by-mail and other voter fraud schemes than California, which plans to send mail-in ballots to all of its more than 20 million registered voters. Since voter registration in the state is tied to driver licensing, it’s all but certain that many “undocumented” persons will be sent ballots since it is legal in the state for illegal immigrants to have a driver’s license.
The reason that Democrats are pushing vote-by-mail schemes is simple. It’s far easier to cheat with vote-by-mail than in-person voting. Nursing homes and elderly residences are particularly at risk. As Adam Liptak pointed out in the New York Times back in 2012:
Voters in nursing homes can be subjected to subtle pressure, outright intimidation or fraud. The secrecy of their voting is easily compromised. And their ballots can be intercepted both coming and going.
But it’s not just the elderly. Handing out absentee or mail-in ballots willy-nilly encourages ne’er-do-well political operatives to buy and sell those ballots, so that they can be filled in for the candidate of their choice.
Currently five states — Oregon, Washington, Utah, Colorado, and Hawaii – conduct their elections exclusively by mail. Democrats – most prominently Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi — are pushing for vote-by-mail nationally, ludicrously claiming that it will improve election integrity.
Pelosi tried to jam vote-by-mail legislation through in the first coronavirus relief bill and vows to keep on trying to strong-arm similar legislation through in future bills, owing to COVID-19 fears.
“No matter what the president says, it cannot be denied,” Pelosi said. “But it takes us to the next step. They have also told us 24/7 the Russians are still at work trying to undermine our election. That’s why we have to have an important chunk of money in this next bill that will enable us to protect the integrity of our elections, as well as enable the American people to vote by mail, especially at this time of a health danger in going to the polls.”
Last week, Pelosi even coined a new term for the vote fraud scheme. “We’re now calling it voting-from-home,” the speaker told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell.
The speaker then pulled out the canard that it’s all about being healthy in this time of pandemic. “This becomes a health issue, as we saw in Wisconsin. Standing in those lines, for that amount of time, going to places that are enclosed is dangerous to your health.”
But in Wisconsin, which is basically the only state to hold an in-person election since the COVID-19 scare began, the numbers don’t bear out Pelosi’s fear mongering. Of more than 400,000 people who took part in the state’s in-person voting, either as a voter or a poll worker, only 52 cases of the virus were reported with no fatalities. Whether those 52 cases were as a result of the in-person election is, of course, up to debate — but even if they were, that’s only an approximate infection rate of 0.013 percent. Hardly a reason to suspend in-person voting.
Absentee voting needs to be reserved for those who truly need it — people serving in the military, others living temporarily abroad, or the disabled. In this case, President Trump is right. Voting is supposed to be a special thing. It cannot be reduced in importance as if it’s the same as mailing in a Publisher’s Clearing House entry.
Photo: BackyardProduction/iStock/Getty Images Plus
James Murphy is a freelance journalist who writes on a variety of subjects, with a primary focus on the ongoing anthropogenic climate-change hoax and cultural issues. He can be reached at [email protected].
